Updates

6/26/16
As of the 23rd, I am on a two-week countdown. No revisions to my book, "Mathew Franklin Whittier in his own words," and I send the revised copy to Dr. Jim Tucker, who holds it for me. He also holds an early version, the purpose being that he can verify what I have changed, and what I haven't, since that early date. If I say I had such-and-such a past-life impression in 2012, and a skeptic says, "How do we know you didn't claim it after-the-fact," I can refer him or her to Dr. Tucker, who can look it up in the early version he is holding, and verify, "No, he really did say that in 2012."

Dr. Tucker has not read my book, and does not endorse it. All I can say is that he is returning a favor, given that I met him and videotaped him at length in year 2007, before anyone else had done so, and posted it online. That video interview has since gone viral.

Today, I had the whim to see if I could find a physical copy of a particular newspaper edition. I couldn't, but I found the next-best thing, a pdf copy I could download. And while doing so, I saw a detail I had to add to the book. I'm not going to reset the clock, however--I am still on my two-week countdown.

Shall I share what it is? It might give you an idea of the kind of intrigue I kept running into, in this study.

Briefly, Mathew appears to have had a habit of naively sharing his portfolio with people, who would then steal his work, thereby putting themselves on the literary map. Aspiring young writers, editors, publishers, etc. I've proven several instances. In this case, he must have shared a portfolio with publisher George W. Light. Normally, Light's little company published very straight-laced Puritan titles. One of them acknowledges the benefits of marrying early, but admonishes young men who do so to remain chaste for the first several years of the marriage. (We don't know whether George followed his author's advice, or not. Probably not.)

He also wrote poetry that I could characterize as worldly--if your friends leave you, flash some cash and they will return. If your girlfriend strays, stay cool and she'll come back.

However, he started publishing some of the poetry from Mathew's portfolio under his own name; and included in it must have been some poems written by Abby, his beloved first wife who had died some years earlier. Light sent a few around to various newspapers; and then in 1851, he published his own book. Several of Mathew's poems are in there, and some of Abby's. Now, one of the newspapers he sent a poem written by Abby to, was the "National Era," which was edited by Mathew's now-famous brother, John Greenleaf Whittier. John Greenleaf, as I gather, did not like Abby, seeing her as the one who had led his brother, Mathew, astray from Quakerism. (This is because when Mathew married Abby, who was not a Quaker, the Quakers disowned him--and John Greenleaf, his own brother, sided with the Quakers.)

George W. Light had to have known what he was doing--that he was submitting poetry written by Mathew's first wife to Mathew's older brother, as his own. He got away with it--there the poem sits under George's own name. However, what I noticed today, when I got hold of the pdf copy, was that it is presented as "Revised for the National Era." I don't know whether that implies that George revised it, or John Greenleaf revised it. But I guarantee he wouldn't have published it if he'd have known who the real author was!

The poem, by the way, is a very good one, deeply spiritual. The man who wrote about flashing his cash to get his friends back, couldn't possibly have written it. Another poem of Abby's he claimed, speaks, in so many words, of soul-mates. The guy who played it cool while his girlfriend was going out with other guys, in order to get her back, is very unlikely to have written it. His claim, in short, is absurd.

This just scratches the surface of the kind of intrigue, and the surprise revelations, I uncovered during the course of my research. And I'm not even addressing the proof for reincarnation. Both detective stories run parallel in this book--the historical case, and the reincarnation case. Both are solved.